What is Digital Public Infrastructure?
Digital Public Infrastructure is a legal institution delivered through governed technology. The Seven Layer Model for Digital Public Infrastructure is a governance-first framework that sequences law, mandate, canonical records, orchestration, execution, interfaces, and oversight to make digital services legally enforceable. It is not the OSI networking model. The outcome is enforceable decisions, traceable accountability, and sustainable interoperability across sectors.
Valid public functions begin in law and remain under institutional custodianship. Systems do not gain legitimacy from performance or configuration; they acquire it through statutory origin, named responsibility, and contestability. Without this legal sequence, a platform can simulate service while failing to constitute governance.
Why this sequence matters
The Seven Layers
Establish the constitutional and statutory basis for digital functions and recognise digital legal effects.
Assign lawful custodianship and responsibility for service delivery and supervision.
Govern registries as evidence with provenance, stewardship, and correction procedures.
Operate certified environments that execute legally defined rules with traceability to institutional instructions.
Finalise public acts and issue binding decisions and certifications with legal effect.
Provide procedural access, receipts, timelines, and inclusive channels that operationalise rights.
Ensure enforceability, redress, and independent supervision over digital acts.
How does the Seven Layer Model make services legally enforceable?
By sequencing legal authority, institutional mandate, canonical records, governed rule execution, binding issuance, user rights at interfaces, and independent oversight.
Is this the OSI
networking model?
No. This framework governs lawful service delivery and due process; OSI standardises network communication and has no legal effect.
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WHY IT IS NEEDED
Digital Public Infrastructure is often built as technology first, with governance and law considered later or not at all. This approach creates risks that weaken trust in institutions and limit the impact of digital public services. The Seven Layer Model was developed to address these gaps and to provide governments, donors, and implementers with a lawful and resilient foundation for digital transformation.
Weak Institutional Mandates
If no public institution is clearly responsible for oversight and delivery, accountability breaks down and trust is eroded.
Records Without Recognition
Registries and data often lack evidentiary safeguards, leading to disputes over ownership, rights, and authenticity.
Unenforceable Outcomes
Services may issue outputs or approvals that lack legal standing, undermining citizen confidence in digital systems.
Lack of Oversight and Remedy
Without channels for appeals, audits, or scrutiny, mistakes and abuses remain uncorrected, weakening institutional legitimacy.
Unclear Legal Authority
When infrastructure is launched without legislation or regulation, its outputs can be challenged as unenforceable, leaving digital public services fragile.
Opaque Service Logic
Rules coded directly into platforms without legal grounding make decisions unappealable and difficult to scrutinise.
Interfaces Without Rights
Portals and apps often provide access but fail to embed procedural rights or obligations, leaving users without recourse.
Stakeholder value
Digital Public Infrastructure succeeds when roles and duties are clear. This table maps the needs of governments, donors, vendors, architects, and civil society to what the Seven Layer Model guarantees, so law first sequencing produces enforceable and reviewable services.
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Reassert national sovereignty by ensuring digital systems operate under statute, not vendor defaults.
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Protect legitimacy of registries, ID, and consent systems through statutory authority.
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Prevent governance displacement by sequencing law before technical deployment.
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Align digital reforms with constitutional continuity rather than donor timelines.
MEET WITH AUTHOR
Senior advisor in Digital Identity and Digital Public Infrastructure. Ott helps institutions align mandates, canonical registers, machine-readable rules, and verifiable execution to deliver enforceable outcomes. Engagements combine policy, architecture, and delivery support.
"My mission in creating the Seven Layer Model is to give countries a practical and lawful path to digital transformation that strengthens trust in institutions."​
Ott Sarv
Author of The Seven Layer Model
INSIGHTS & STATISTICS
7
LAYERS OF LAW AND GOVERNANCE
23
INTEROPERABILITY USE CASES STUDIED
45
DATA
SYSTEMS BENCHMARKED
18
ADVISORY SESSIONS DELIVERED GLOBALLY